03 Sep 2024

Government continues to intensify efforts to develop sports in the country through investing in infrastructural development.

Speaking in an interview with BOPA on Monday, the Director of sport and recreation in the Minitry of Youth, Gender, Sport and Culture, Mr Moreetsi Bogosi said government’s ongoing efforts to avail quality-sporting facilities showed commitment to building a culture of excellence in sport in the country. 

He said currently government is constructing 10 community stadia around the country and all the facilities are constructed in phase one covering structural components while phase two covers sporting environment facilities. 

Mr Bogosi said stadia play critical role in the development of sport, creation of jobs, venue for social gathering and interaction, national events, a hub that is also mainly used as a competitive venue for elite leagues and amateur sporting games. 

He said the impact of sport infrastructure development is to achieve commercialised sport and use it to diversify the economy.

“Mr Bogosi shared that at the moment, Botswana does not own any sporting complex hub nor multi-sport indoor sport complex, which are considered for in NDP12. 

Touching on conceptualising modern sporting infrastructure or sporting hubs, Mr Bogosi said consideration emphasis should not be centred around sport development only but benefits and opportunities that ought to entail the entertainment ecosystems for self-sustainability of the facilities. 

He said services such as en-suites for VIPs, corporates, individuals and groups, dining areas, entertainment centres, restaurants, high performance centres, sport museums, healthy lifestyles apartment studios, cinemas, shopping studios, among other things should be part of the amenities for continual utilisation. 

Also, he noted that provision of high-speed internet connectivity would also enable marketing and advertising media agents to capture the attention of spectators and get better economic returns from sports facilities. 

As for talent identification, he said National Sporting Associations (NSAs) through their regional structures were mandated for such. 

Mr Bogosi opined that investment in huge sporting infrastructure is dependent on the utilisation rate and maintenance level. 

He said factors such as country spatial plan considering population size also plays a big role, noting it is a fact that incorporation of innovation in the conceptualisation of sporting infrastructure can bear economic benefits and contribute to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but it might be a perceived theory also. 

“It must be noted that patterns differ country to country, for instance investing in massive state of the art modern sporting infrastructure in Egypt or a highly populated country with high-income status will differ from a country that is still in middle income and aspiring to be at a high-income status,” he noted.  

The theory, he said, was not also reliable as sport codes are also determinants of stadium usage not forgetting the affordability to pay for watching such sports. 

He said mega state-of-the-art sporting infrastructure, political and financial stability can give the country an added advantage to host international approved competitions.

This, he said, would contribute to a number of value chains sectors such as hotels, transport, entertainment, catering, restaurants, shopping complexes, tourism, marketing and advertising, among others. 

He is of the view that if fully developed and consumed consistently, sport can be an industry player like in other European nations. 

Mr Bogosi said a Sport Satellite National Account needs to be established to gauge how much sport contributes to GDP. Ends